


Lotus

by missmichellebelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Friendship, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Romance, Self-Worth, Slavery, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never about Eren; he impersonated a soldier to save his friend's life, to perhaps repay the life-debt that had started the moment he had come into the their care. Nothing more.</p><p>Except... Now that he's here, he can’t help but realize that <i>this</i> is his chance.</p><p>That this is his time to prove that he's more than just a slave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lotus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkshaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkshaming/gifts).



> rating subject to change, and tags to be added as needed.
> 
> a story many months in the making, and, ultimately, a gift for my dearest [Brambles](http://the-ugly-fic-ling.tumblr.com), who is the reason it even exists in the first place.
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNING!!! this first chapter briefly mentions child abuse in the form of child slavery.**

It is late morning when Eren quietly clambers over the garden wall. The sun is at the same height it usually is when he finishes his morning chores, and with luck, his masters will be none-the-wiser of his other morning activities.

But, if life has taught Eren anything, it is that luck is never on his side.

“Welcome back.”

The voice startles Eren so much that he loses his footing and stumbles right into the flowerbeds, and turns to find a simultaneously amused yet disappointed Armin watching him.

“Have fun in town?” He asks, holding out a hand to help Eren out onto the path, and Eren grudgingly accepts it, even if he does use more of his own strength than Armin’s to right himself again.

“Town?” Eren finally responds, and gives a short laugh. It sounds natural enough to his own ears, considering how incredibly forced it is. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Armin gives him a long, discerning look that makes Eren shift where he stands. Most people underestimate his master. He’s small, and frail, and sickly, but he’s the most clever man that Eren has ever been fortunate to meet—much more clever than Eren is, himself. The chance of passing off this lie is slim to none, but sometimes Eren gets away with things if he plays dumb for long enough.

Sometimes.

Without a word, Armin reaches forward and tugs at the bandage carefully wrapped around Eren’s left elbow. Eren stills as the fabric falls away, revealing no kind of fresh wound, but rather a weathered scar, the remnants of a hot branding pushed into Eren’s skin long ago.

“You know what will happen,” Armin begins as he winds the cloth around his hand and Eren stares at his feet, face hot with shame, “if they catch you, right?” Rather than demand Eren look at him, he ducks down until he meets Eren’s eye line. It’s something about Armin and the Arlert family that he took for granted when he was young, that he is the most thankful for now.

They’ve never treated him like the slave he is.

But maybe that’s where Eren’s defiance has stemmed from. Maybe that’s the reason he looks away and keeps his mouth shut rather than responding, like he’s Armin’s equal when in reality, he’s not.

And Armin will not punish him, because Armin and his grandfather have never punished Eren.

Guilt washes over him in waves, even as he bites his lip and doesn’t say a word.

“Execution is the only sentence for acting above your station, Eren,” Armin says, voice calm and steady. _Worried_. “Would you at least try to remember that when you go and try to pick up extra work?”

Eren’s hands shake where they’re balled into fists at his sides.

“I’m just trying to _help_ ,” Eren insists, voice just as unsteady as his quickly flaring temper. “I know that we’re struggling, and I can’t make the harvest on my own, and we can’t afford to hire any workers or, or—” _to buy any more slaves_. “Not that it matters if I go,” he snarls, keeping his eyes on the ruined flowerbed that he’ll have to replant, or the uneven pathway that he hasn’t had time to re-lay since it the previous winter. Anywhere but at Armin. “No one will give me work.”

“Be thankful for that!” Armin’s voice rises, but it’s hardly a yell. “You won’t help us by getting yourself killed, Eren.” There’s a flicker of movement in the corner of Eren’s vision, and he’s moving before his brain can register what his reflexes already know. He catches Armin quickly, and his master is breathing heavily where he’s collapsed into Eren’s sturdy hold.

“Come.” For now, the anger leaves Eren’s voice. Frustrations to vent another day, and an argument he’s sure isn’t over. “Let’s get you back inside.”

“I’m fine,” Armin insists as he shuffles along, Eren supporting most of his weight. “It’s just too cold out.”

It’s late summer, and the sun is already hot where it balances on the horizon like a ball, but Eren doesn’t say a word.

“You are helpful, you know,” Armin says after a few moments, voice soft. “Grandfather and I wouldn’t be able to get by without you.” They look at each other, and Armin smiles. “Even if we would get into far less trouble.”

Eren grins, albeit a bit sheepishly, and helps Armin up the back steps and into the warmth of the house. It’s about time for him to start breakfast, anyway.

He knows Armin’s words are true, but they are still hard for Eren to accept, just as they’ve always been. After all the Arlerts have done for him, Eren is sure there will never be enough he can do to help and repay them. They saved his life, in a way, and what is he to do? Offer up his life in return?

A lot _that’s_ worth, a slave’s life. Even Eren is smart enough to know _that_.

*

A little over a decade ago, roughly, the Arlerts purchased Eren at an open air market. He was seven, and remembers very little about where he was at the time. He remembers the face of the men who were selling him, but no their names. He remembers their whips, and the hot iron brand they had forced into the crook of his elbow as he screamed and cried for his mother. He remembers dirty water, and the scratch of hay, and sleeping.

Sleeping to escape all the other horrible things.

It had been Armin’s eyes he had met that one fateful morning at market, standing still and obedient beside his post, chained by the neck, wrists and ankles bound too tightly with rope. The second he had seen blue eyes, there had been a sharp pain against his back, and he had dropped his eyes.

 _Don’t look up_ , he had been told. He was a slave now. He had lost the privilege to make eye contact the second the traders had taken him from his dead parents and empty home.

And then it had been Armin’s voice, quiet and gentle as it still is, and his clean, soft hand taking hold of Eren’s dirty one. There is more to the story—Armin’s grandfather arguing with the traders, paying them, but those memories are as dull and faded as scars. Eren remembers the feel of Armin’s hand the most, of the freedom when Master Arlert had cut his bindings and the traders had unshackled his throat. Of the quiet walk, where Eren’s legs had been too weak to carry him, so Master Arlert had picked him up and done it instead.

He meets the older Master Arlert’s eyes now as he sets down his morning tea, and is greeted with an older face that looks the same in his memories even though they took place long ago now.

“Good morning, Master Anselm,” Eren greets, the weight of that morning’s disobedience sitting heavy on his heart and his words. Armin sits quietly nearby, a book open discretely in his lap as he picks at his food, but he says nothing. Although it would surprise Eren immensely if Armin knew of his sneaking out and Master Anselm did not.

“Good morning, Eren,” he says in return, voice warm and eyes kind, and Eren thinks of Armin’s words and vows not to go into town ever again.

…or for a week at least.

Master Anselm and Armin are his family, and while he hates to hurt them in any fashion, he knows that a bag of coin is worth far more to them in this time than his undying obedience. If he’s careful, nothing bad ever has to happen.

“Breakfast nearly done?” He asks, taking the cup and humming with delight as he sips. It had taken many years and many pots of tea for Eren to brew it to Master Anselm’s idea of perfection, but it still fills him with the warmth of satisfaction ever single time he gets it right.

“Just need to bring it out, sir,” Eren responds.

“You will join us today, won’t you?”

He could demand it. A strange request of a slave, but still in Master Anselm’s realm of power to ask. But he always leaves his requests open. Should Eren choose instead to start his chores, or to eat in the kitchen, or in the garden, he is free to do so.

The Arlert household is the only place in the country now where he is free.

“Of course, sir. I would be happy to.”

“Glad to hear it.” Master Anselm gives him a smile, and then turns his wise blue eyes on his grandson. “And Armin, put that book away. You may return to your studies _after_ breakfast.”

Eren cracks a smile and slips into the kitchen.

He doesn’t remember his own parents very much anymore. He lost both of them to the plague that ravished the country when he was very young, and was told frequently by the traders that he was lucky it hadn’t taken his own life. The most he remembers is that his mother had died first, and his father sometime afterward, and Eren would have surely starved or frozen to death in their old house had the traders not found him.

Or so they said.

Master Anselm had tried to find his parents at first, sure that they were actually alive. Eren had not had the hope to believe such a thing, could remember his parents dead faces far too easily, but let his new Master do as he wished.

Eren did learn that his father had been a doctor. That his mother had been born beyond the Great Wall before it had ever existed. That they were in fact registered as dead, just like he had known. With that knowledge, Master Anselm had tried to make Eren an Arlert, but he was already branded. Already registered a slave in the country of Sina, and forever a slave he would be, until his death or until someone could pay the entire worth of his life. A foolish sum, for it could never be set or paid by anyone, except perhaps the Chancellor himself.

Master Anselm had promised then that Eren would be a part of their family in every aspect except the law, and while Eren sometimes wakes from dreams about his mother with a very apparent ache, he could not have asked for a better family.

*

“Are you feeling better?” Eren asks, find it awkward to stand while Armin is sitting, like it makes their difference in status more pronounced somehow. He would sit himself, but he still has many chores to complete, and knows that once he sits he won’t be willing to get back up. Armin looks up from the large book open in front of him, and Eren can’t help but wrinkle his nose. His mother had taught him the alphabet as a small child, but without the constant practice necessary at a young age, Eren had lost it. After all, schooling isn’t something people think to offer to a slave.

Master Anselm had seen fit to teach him the basics when he began living with the Arlerts, but he never took to it as easily or enthusiastically as Armin did. He was always more prone to the fields, to feeling the dirt between his fingers and the wind in his hair, than staying indoors with his nose pressed to pages all day.

“I was just a little tired,” Armin insists, hands pressed reverently over the expensive parchment the book he’s cradling is made of. He touches it with a reverence Eren has never approached anything with in his life. “I’m fine now.”

For as long as Eren has been under Master Anselm’s care, Armin has been sick. Not from anything in particular, or so the doctor that visits weekly insists. He was born sickly, his body not made to grow strong and healthy like most peoples. It makes Eren glad that Armin has his grandfather, and this life, where he can still live happily. Had he shared Eren’s fate, it would not have been as kind to him.

“Have you thought more about our discussion?” Armin continues, voice aired with distraction as he turns back to his studies, and Eren shifts where he stands as if Armin’s eyes are on him even though they are not.

“I have, and…” Eren looks to the doors, where he can see the garden and fields of the Arlert farm stretching towards the horizon. “You’re right. I was being stupid.”

“True,” Armin agrees, making Eren pout, even if he _was_ the one to put the idea forward in the first place. “But… Your actions came from the right place.” His eyes are kind when he lifts them to Eren—the friendly gaze of the best friend Eren has ever had, and could have ever thought to ask for. “Did you want to read with me a bit?” Armin asks, a playful lilt to his voice as he gestures to the intimidating stack of books piled beside him, and Eren blanches.

“I appreciate the offer, but I have _so_ many chores to do, so…” Eren gives a wave and heads to the door, Armin’s laughter following him out into the lingering morning chill and Eren’s workload for the day.

*

Things weren’t always this way.

When Eren had first come to live with Armin and Master Anselm, the farm had been bustling with farmhands and a variety of other hired help. Master Anselm had been one of the wealthiest farmers in the Shiganshina District—wealthy enough to pay wages to local townspeople rather than work his farm with only slaves. Eren had been quite the oddity when he had been brought back from market on that fateful day.

He had been too weak at the time to work in the fields, and had alternated times having private lessons with Master Anselm, attending Armin’s lessons with the schoolmaster, or learning the household chores from the house staff. How to prepare the Master’s tea, to keep the kitchen, to clean the house, to wash the linens. Only once he had meat and muscle on his bones and could easily carry the groceries from the cart to the house was he sent to the fields to learn to plow and sow the field, to harvest, to care for the livestock and butcher it, when the time came.

But the years have been hard on not just the Arlert family, but the Shiganshina District as a whole. Rising taxes and poor weather conditions, and the Arlert farm staff had been reduced to Eren and the occasional hired hand to help with especially time-consuming duties. Most of the land had been sold, too vast for Eren to work all on his own, and Eren’s strength and skillfulness had grown with the amount of responsibilities he was suddenly required to carry.

He knew his masters worried about him, about if the work was too much for him, but even if he collapses exhausted into his bed each evening, it is with a smile on his face.

Eren doesn’t mind the work, and lives for the satisfaction at the end of a long day that only comes from that feeling of usefulness completing his chores often gives him.

The debt he owes to Armin and Master Anselm is great, and he repays it in inches in every way he can and knows how.

*

But their lives, as simple as they are, are constantly changing. Like the crops come harvest, they are uprooted, again and again and again, until it is unclear what was there before. It has happened to them many times before, but Eren is not expecting it that day, the same way he never expects it.

That morning, as he works in the field, he sees the stream of flags from a distance, and shields his eyes to watch them flutter in the wind and wink in the sunlight. He’s never seen such a sight before, and they grab hold of his attention as they stop and start and stop continuously until disappearing behind a series of rolling hills in the distance. The second they are gone, he turns back pushing the plow through the soil, the strange sight already forgotten.

It is not until dinner, many hours later, when something feels particularly amiss. They eat in silence, which, while not unusual, doesn’t feel as calm as it normally does. It is not the silence of eating, or of pleasant company, like Eren has grown accustomed to. It slithers and crawls over his skin, making his hair stand on end and a stone sit heavy in the pits of his stomach.

Something isn’t right.

He looks first at Armin, who’s gaze is down even though there is no book in his lap. He’s not eating, which isn’t unusual, but he’s not even pretending at it. Eren watches him push a boiled potato around with the end of his fork, mouth twisted in resigned frown. There is no thoughtful expression past that. No inkling of concentration, or hints of his mind being somewhere far more complex than Eren’s ever goes. Just… Blankness. Emptiness.

As if he’s seen a ghost.

Eren looks next at Master Anselm, who eats steadily as he always does, cutting the pork on his plate into small pieces before eating them with the delicacy of a man raised under the watchful eyes of a Governess. But the veins on his hands stand out as he grips his fork too tightly, his jaw tense as he chews, and he looks at no one and nothing but the grains in the table top just beyond the edge of his plate.

 _Tension_. That’s what this silence is. Heavy and horrible and thick on Eren’s tongue—so thick it feels absolutely suffocating.

“What?” He asks, just to break it. It’s not his place to ask questions. It’s not his right to seek answers. But the Arlerts have raised him to be free under the protection of their roof, and in this moment, he will act it. “What’s wrong?”

Neither of them will look at him, but it is much more obvious than before.

“What’s happened?” His voice cracks, remembering the last time bad news had descended upon them like a raincloud.

The taxes have gone up again. They’ll have to sell more land. Sell the animals. Sell the farm entirely.

Sell him.

“ _Please_.” The urge to demand to know sits at the bottom of his throat, but he does not exercise it. So long as he’s been in their care, he never has. Whatever is happening, he knows it will come to light with time as all things do, but living knowingly in ignorance will eat at him. He needs them to tell him.

He needs that.

“War has come,” Master Anselm begins, voice gruff, and the announcement shocks Eren so far through his bones that he goes rigid in his stillness. “The Great Wall has been breached, and the Titans have invaded Sina.”

 _The Titans_. More legend than history, at least to Eren. They’ve not been heard of nor seen since the Chancellor had the Great Wall constructed, and had brought peace to the country of Sina. No longer did the people have to fear the savages that had pillaged their villages, killed their men, and abducted their wives and children.

Not legends, but cautionary tales. Horror stories.

He has never seen one, with his eyes or a depiction in one of Armin’s many books, but now he imagines a monster, far larger than any human, and far more cruel.

But he swallows down the fear and keeps his face set in concentration.

It is bad news, indeed. They do not live too close to the wall, and Sina is large. There’s no telling how many days it will take the Titans to cross into civilization and start whatever murderous rampage that thrums through them. Enough time, surely, for the Chancellor to rouse the militia and protect them, right?

Bad news, but Eren can’t help but think it’s not the worst.

He turns back to his dinner, happy to have the air cleared, when he realizes that Master Anselm and Armin are still far too solemn. He wonders if perhaps he does not understand the gravity of this war. If he is missing something crucial that his own face isn’t sunken with despair.

“Is there… Something else?” He can’t help but ask, worried eyes flickering between them, and is startled when Master Anselm pulls a scroll from within the pocket of his coat. Armin’s shoulders sink further, and if Eren hadn’t already been told the news, he would be sure something was wrong with his friend.

“The Commander of the Military, in joint with the Chancellor, has put out a call-to-arms.” Master Anselm rolls the scroll across the table, but Eren is far too unskilled in reading to attempt to decipher the document, especially upside-down.

“A call-to-arms?” The term feels vague and foreign on Eren’s tongue.

“Mmm.” Master Anselm regards the document with a heavy frown, but he does not read it. Whatever it says, Eren is certain his master already knows. “Mandatory.”

The word feels especially dooming, but Eren is still confused.

“What does that mean, sir?”

“It means I have to go,” Armin chirps up, and Eren turns wide eyes on his friend. “One representative from every household. Required by law.” He swallows. “The penalty for refusal is imprisonment or banishment at the very least… Death at the worst.”

“Armin…” Eren gapes at him. Armin, off to serve in a war. To defend himself and others with weapons that he is too weak to carry. To ride on horseback or walk miles.

Forget dying on the battlefield. His body won’t survive training.

“Armin, you’ll _die_.” Eren’s hands grip the table, tight and purposeful, an attempt to keep a hold of his rising temper.

“ _Eren_ ,” Master Anselm chastises, but it won’t stop. Eren grits his teeth and closes his eyes, and all he can see, all he can feel, is the death sentence they have just been handed.

“He won’t survive it!” Eren insists, pushing himself to standing. “Master, he can hardly walk the garden on his own without fainting! How can they expect him to fight a war?”

“Conscriptions don’t take those things into account, Eren, they don’t even know—”

“And what then? When they find out? Will they come back for you, Master Anselm, and expect you to fight with a cane in one hand and a sword in the other?”

“Eren—”

“Send me! I’m strong, and I don’t know how to fight, but I can learn! I can—”

“They will not accept you!” Master Anselm interjects, and Eren’s words putter and die, sentenced to silence by the surprise of his master’s raised voice. “You are a _slave_ , Eren, not a member of this household.”

It pierces him as hard as any whip ever had. Hurts worse than any beating. Like a physical strike, Eren stumbles back and catches himself on the chair behind him, shocked into silence as his face crumples with the realization.

Just a slave. Even when it comes to saving his best friend’s life, he is powerless.

Without a word, he leaves, the protest of Armin’s voice following him out the door. It hurts, but Eren doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> [read, reblog, & like on tumblr](http://missmichellebelle.tumblr.com/post/136971649180/lotus)


End file.
